Valenti of SasquatchResearch.net Drums up Media

The picture above is Jason Valenti in a bigfoot costume for a film festival commercial. He is also the man in charge of markeing for the Falcon project, a research endeavor to document Bigfoot with the help of 35 foot blimps. If our facebook page is any indication. Most folks in the community are unenthused about the Falcon Project. Not because it is not a fascinating idea, but because there has not been much happening since the project has been announced over a year ago.

Recently, however, the project may be getting some traction. We can only guess this is why Jason and crew have been getting attention from mainstream media. At the Humboldt Beacon, a local news weekly, Jason Valenti has penned the first, in a four-part series. On his website SasquatchResearch.net his short bio is as follows:

Jason Valenti is a resident of Ferndale, WA.
He was introduced to the Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomenon
in 1996 one spring morning at 4 a,m. in the Appalachicola
National Forest near Tallahassee, Florida. Since that
moment he has been driven to find out more about this
elusive species. He moved from Largo, FL to Bellingham,
WA in 1999. In the 10 years of residency he has
discovered some very interesting areas in the Pacific
Northwest that he frequents with several other
researchers. His research has led him into the same
areas that Lloyd Pye has tapped into and he is in the
process of writing a book and developing a foundation
called Hominoid Research Group for the further studies of
Hominoids.

You can read the Humboldt Beacon article below. If you want our first impression, he seems to tie Dr. Jeff Meldrum's research in the same article as some of Loyd Pye's hominoid theories.

In 2007 there was an incident that took place in the scientific community that created interest of considerable proportion. Most people didn't really notice what had happened, but Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum had struck the anvil of science so hard that the shock waves of his published paper entitled “Evidence for the Existence of North American Apes” will continue to be felt for years to come.
Scattered across the United States at that time were a handful of men who would feel that shock wave, and eventually unite under the same purpose: to find out exactly what the creature is that is mentioned in Dr. Meldrum's paper, and to capture it on film.

What is a hominoid?

Hominoids are what have, up to now, been collectively labeled as Pre-Humans, (post- Miocene Apes). These are the tailless short armed apes that we've all seen in the fossil record, from the Australopithecines to the Genus Homo.

It simply means the family of apes (according to classification) that resemble humans in their ability to walk on two legs instead of four. Outside of that distinction, Hominoids seem to share most of the same characteristics in the family of Hominidea with other apes.

Although the article never mentions Lloyd Pye, the hominoid reference is a pretty strong association to those who know of Jason Valenti.

Fans, you know we think a good theory can come from anywhere, but we wouldn't consider the research of Dr. Jeff Meldrum and that Lloyd Pye to be in the same camp. More specifically there is an extra-terrestrial aspect of Pye's theories.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Falcon Project: A blimp to find Bigfoot
Dr. Jeff Meldrum Explains Lack of Bones

EXTERNAL LINKS
Falcon Project Website: www.bigfoot24-7.com
Humboldt Beacon Article
SasquatchResearch.net
Lloyd Pye Wikipedia Page

Bigfoot Balloons for Falcon Project Yet to be Built

We have been following the falcon project all year. We first brought it up in February with our post The Falcon Project: A Blimp to Find Bigfoot and recently had an update, aptly titled The Falcon Project Update

We have been so excited about this blimp. Initially described as:

"The blimp is 35 feet long and holds 1800 cubic feet of helium. It is run on electric batteries and is remote-controlled from the ground. The batteries will enable it to be airborne for five hours at a time, and can cover about five miles in any direction."

In a new article by a CBS Affiliate, Sacramento's Channel 13, Neda Iranpour reports most of what is already covered in our previous two post. Interestingly we learn the Blimps have yet to be built.

"He's still waiting for the balloons to be built. He's also waiting for funding from groups as far away as Russia."

Although this does not directly contradict the information on the website. We had the feeling that these Blimps were already built.

The website still has a paragraph stating:

"Since this website was launched, expert technicians have blessed this project toward a remote-controlled, dual-airship, 35 feet long, with a patented propulsion system, run by a very quiet gas engine that will keep the blimp up for five hours, and for a five mile radius."

We sent a message out to William to get further clarification and hope to update you fans as soon as possible. We want to know when these things are gonna start patrolling the forest from above!

One thing we can say is the official Falcon Project website (www.bigfoot24-7.com) has also been updated. We thought the Business Plan page was worth reading.

OUR PREVIOUS POSTS
The Falcon Project: A Blimp to Find Bigfoot
The Falcon Project Update

RELATED LINKS
CBS Channel 13 article
Falcon Project Website
SasquatchResearch.net

Squatchin' with Cliff and Craig

Clearly seen, circled in red, are two of the best guy's to go squatchin' with.
You know Cliff from NorthAmericanBigfoot and Craig from CrappyLittleDreams, but to be honest, until you spend a weekend squatchin' with them, you don't really know them.

Between Cliff's encyclopedic Bigfoot knowledge and Craig's survivalist skills it was the perfect formula for our greenhorn artist Guy Edwards to understand what field research can entail. Guy left us as a poser, and came back to us a bonafide field researcher.

That was the beauty of Cliff's message, anybody can do field research, and he encourages everybody to do so. Bring the 10 essentials, your camping gear (tent, tarp, matt, sleeping bag)and anything you can use to document your findings (a camera, measuring tape, and casting material). If you need to buy some of these essentials, you can use this REI Coupon Code here to help you save.

On the two full days we spent with Cliff we followed a similar pattern. First find a perching spot with steep access, overlooking a narrow valley. Then check out the valley floor for prints during the day and try some calls at night.
The perching spot seems to have multiple advantages. The first is from the perspective of Bigfoot. A perch allows Bigfoot a clear view of the valley floor to watch all the fauna (food) criss cross on the multiple trails below. Another advantage is the acoustics. Due to the nature of being on one side of a narrow valley, there is almost always a facing wall on the other side. Especially If the facing wall is concave its like an amphitheater and all the sounds will bounce back to you. Cliff explains it the video below.



DAYTIME:
We hike down from the steep perch, which its easier than it looks, unless your trying to keep pace with Cliff Barackman, who happens to be half gazelle or mountain goat. When he says, "If you want to see Bigfoot, you have to be Bigfoot," he is serious.

The goal is to get straight to the waterway, and then follow it up or downstream. Bigfoot have soft padded feet and the best chances for a print is going to be right at the edge of a stream with the wet sedimentary mud.

We noticed Cliff cataloged every significant clean print he found, mostly bear and cat. Although we did see plenty of deer track. With a digital camera and a retractable measuring tape he took multiple shots of each print.

Before dark we work our way back to camp, which was always uphill and, as you would expect, more challenging.

NIGHTTIME:
Theres enough time to prepare food and eat before we get back to squatchin'. A campfire and a dutch oven of boiled potatoes fed the crew the first night. Due to the greater exposure of our second camp, we went without campfire, the second night. Thermal underwear would have been handy.

Darkness finally falls and the audio recorder turns on. We begin with a little wood knocking, to get their attention and peak curiosity, then it switches to trying out a few calls. With a couple of "Bah-whoops!" we wait. The time between each knock and each call varied, although after each call we waited at least 20 minutes for a response.

We didn't get a whole lot of "action" either night, but Bigfoot Field Research seems very similar to fishing. Any fisher man will tell you why its called "fishing" and not "catching".

OTHER LESSONS WE LEARNED
1. Bears do sh*t in the woods--often
2. Around a campfire, cougar stories are way scarier than ghost stories
3. Cliff Barackman can traverse 50 yards of any type of terrain, deep brush, river, river bed, cliff face, swamp in the blink of an eye.

RELATED LINKS
Cliff's Blog NorthAmericanBigfoot
Craig Flipy's Crappy Little Dreams